Dona Nobis Pacem (Change Your Climate)

Hola Kitties! We are again participating in the annual BlogBlast 4 Peace. This is the 13th year for one of my favorite blogging events. I've been doing my part since 2011. Mimi Lenox, the founder, wanted to know what would happen if the entire blogosphere posted about world peace on the same day using the same title—Dona Nobis Pacem. It hasn't changed the world—yet—but it's provided some creative and wonderful images of peace. The theme this year is Change Your Climate. If you've been listening to Greta Thunberg, you've heard some powerful truths about our environment; our climate.

I'm not meowing about cats. As usual we're not the problem. I'm meowing about humans. Cats are not the problem. Cats don't drive cars or burn fossil fuels. We're happy with an earth-friendly cardboard box or paper bag, some nip grown in our Garden of Eden and fishy food pulled from our oceans. 

Pollution is threatening our food chain and our very existence. We have to ax ourselves how much mercury and poison is in that fish that's in our dishes? What harmful chemicals are being fed to the chickens and cows we eat? Which brands are putting diseased animal carcasses into our food? Is our nip organic or is it loaded with harmful pesticides? Can we get window whiffies or is the air full of car and truck emissions? And what of our feral brofurs and sisfurs struggling on the streets who are drinking from puddles of acid rain? If you don't think pollution affects your four-legged friends, you are sadly mistaken.

1Thingus.com is a great resource to learn what you can do. They
have links to some of the better green websites.

We in the condo thought we were being so Earth friendly. The peeps don't own a car and walk everywhere they can. They recycle religiously, washing out every bottle and can, including cat food cans and discarding every piece of plastic with a recycle symbol.

Our town isn't being as Earth friendly. All the plastics we meticulously wash are being re-routed to the landfill. Our town only recycles plastics labeled 1, 2 or 3. This means we can no longer recycle yogurt containers or the trays the peeps hoity toity food comes in that we wash out nor any container marked 5.

All this makes us sad. It makes us both sad and mad that:

• Sea levels are rising faster than in the last 3000 years. 
• Average wildlife populations have dropped by 60 percent in just over 40 years. 
• Two-thirds of extreme weather events in the last 20 years were influenced by humans. 
• 120,000 square kilometers of tropical forest were lost in 2018. 
• There’s more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than any time in human history.
• We consumed all of earth's 2019 resources that can be regenerated on July 29. We have been overspending for almost half a year with dire consequences.

You can read the entire scary article here.

As always, as DJ CK, I've come up with some powerful music. I hope you have time to listen to these three. Two are by Pete Seeger, to whom I dedicated my 2016 peace globe.

Pete Seeger wrote: "We're filling up the sea/the sky/our mind with garbage. … What will we do when there's nothing left to see and nothing left to be but garbage." I hope you'll listen to this powerful song written in 1974 when we should have been addressing this problem. As it is still true today, money talks and as long as politicians and corporations can line their pockets with green, nothing else matters.

In 1972 Don McLean wrong these lyrics which close out the song "Tapestry." I've quotes these words before and I think even Greta Thunberg would approve of them. "Every fish that swims silent, every bird that flies freely, every doe that steps softly. Every crisp leaf that falls, all the flowers that grow
on this colorful tapestry, somehow they know. That if man is allowed to destroy all they need. He will soon have to pay with his life, for his greed."

Unfortunately these songs don't provide answers but I want to close on a positive note. Quoting from another Pete Seeger song: "One blue sky above us. One ocean lapping all our shores. One earth so green and round, who could ask for more." This song, plus the words of Greta Thunberg was the inspiration for my 2019 peace globe.

I'm also joining the Music Moves Me blog hop hosted by Curious as a Cathy and a chorus of others. This month I get to be the conductor. November is Native American Heritage Month so next week I'll be sharing music from Indigenous musicians and those inspired by them. Thanks for sticking around until the end of this LONG post. Namaste. Peace out.

You can listen to my entire Mother Earth playlist with songs by R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Talking Heads, et al and covering several musical genres. There were tons of songs I didn't get to add.